History
Smoke was yet billowing out of the pile of rubble that was Manila right after liberation when the young Ben Salvosa could no longer ignore the call to go north. West, to the land of milk and honey. North, to the heartland of the "kuripots," where he found a mining town ripe for education and a climate that was just what the doctor ordered for his asthma. To the North Ben brought his asthm
a and his dream. His dream - an educational center of the north - started to take shape in Baguio Colleges. It continues to grow - later to become the Baguio Colleges Foundation; now the University of the Cordilleras - bringing the light of education to the Cordilleras and Northern Luzon. To himself, a successful legal practitioner, it was just a matter of time before he started toying with the idea of a College of Law in the north, a college modeled after his alma mater, the UP College of Law, or at least on his fond recollection of it. More than anyone, Ben was aware that the BCF College of Law was an experiment, and a costly one at that. Until the seventies, the College could not support itself, and had to depend on a subsidy from the school administration. It was the only College of Law North of Manila when it opened in 1952 - to a lot of raised eyebrows. Could it hold its own in the bar examinations? We owe it to the first batch of BCF law graduates for proving the experimenter, BCF Founder Ben Salvosa, right. Had the first batch done poorly in the bar, the founder might conceivably have succumbed to pressure to phase out the college, as quietly as he had founded it. As far as can be determined, all members of that intrepid group have since passed away, many ahead of the founder. Offhand, one remembers Atty. Guillermo de Guzman, Atty. Alex Brillantes, Judge Tomas Macaranas, Judge Federico Cabato and Atty. Onofre Alabanza, who became a member of the faculty. As the pioneers, their memories will continue to be recalled whenever and wherever alumni forgather. Even under favorable circumstances the birthing of a college, especially a College of Law, is difficult. The main problem is putting together a faculty. For some time, the Founder himself taught law and served as the first Dean from 1952 to 1966. It was only after 1966 that the founder started handling the reins to BCF law graduates: Victor Punzalan, Faustino Basaen, Jose Cristobal, Edilberto B. Tenefrancia, Teopisto Rondez, Honorato Y. The present dean is Reynaldo U. Agranzamendez. Vision
The new millennium will witness the dawning of the Age of University in almost all phases of human activity. As people and nations slowly and irreversibly move towards borderless transactions in international trade and commerce, and towards increasing multilateral cooperation in the development of science and technology, health, medicine, education, diplomacy and all other human faculties, there will be an increasing demand for "global lawyers" who are attuned to these competitive times, and who will be learned in the contemporary discipline of brokering peace, understanding and cooperation among diverse societies. The field of law will be one of the frontiers in this global march towards social oneness for it shall be the men and women of law who will lay down the new rules of engagement for all human intercourse in the 21st century - and beyond. There will come in the future, an international community of legal scholars whose wisdom and intercession shall become the fiber of the emerging global culture. Invariably, some of these legal scholars will be Filipinos, and most of them will be graduates of the University of the Cordilleras College of Law. Mission
The UC College of Law believes in its solemn duty to train men and women in the study of Law, who would be confronted with the challenges of the legal practice and will become part of the living canvass into which the stories of lives, impressions, prejudices, memories and fleeting passions are interwoven and transformed through them by the courts into judgments of a legal significance to be carried over into the future as regulatory precepts for the good ordering of society.
